Crop diversity and environmental constraints in the New Mexico foodshed

Background/Question/Methods New Mexico has taken a proactive approach to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Two policy recommendations include greater emphasis on local and organic food production. High poverty rates put one in six residents at risk for satisfying their next meal. A resurgence of local sustainable agriculture is underway but would benefit from comprehensive assessments of environmental potentials and constraints to produce a diversity of crops for nutritionally complete diets. The mission of FoodPrint New Mexico is to guide the development of a local food supply chain, from farm to table, powered by solar and wind. The goal of relocalizing food production, distribution, processing and storage to support nearly 2 million residents implies a shift away from the practice of maximized export commodity production toward maximized crop diversity for local consumption. We adopted a maximum diversity (Shannon entropy) framework to assess the potential for strategic shifts in the production of 11 commodities that constitute over 90% of cultivated cropland in 33 counties, subject to constraints set by potential evapotranspiration, precipitation, and irrigation.
Results/Conclusions Production of individual crops varied nonlinearly with aridity, the ratio of potential evapotranspiration to available water. For any given crop, some counties deviated positively from the trend while others fell below, indicating unmet environmental potential for production.  Across crops, most counties have opportunities to simultaneously increase production while augmenting diversity state-wide. Sensitivities related to crop selection, environment, and distance to market reveal the New Mexico foodshed as a portfolio of counties that are differentially sensitive to environmental and economic drivers. Application of the maximum diversity framework can guide management decisions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions via localization and enhance access to a more nutritious diet by optimizing the production potential of counties that collectively constitute the foodshed.